novel
experience of all--along White Rock Canyon of the Rio Grande, in Mesa
Verde Park, Colorado, are thousands of plastered caves, the homes of the
cliff dwellers. You reach them by ladder. There is no danger of wolves,
or damp. Camp in one of them for nothing wherever the water in the brook
below happens to be good. Hundreds of archaeologists, who come from
Egypt, Greece, Italy, England, to visit these remains, spend their
summer holiday this way. Why can't you? Or if you are not a good
adventurer into the Unknown alone, then join the summer school that goes
out to the caves from Santa Fe every summer.

Is it safe? That question to a Westerner is a joke. Safer, much safer,
than in any Eastern city! I have slept in ranch cabins of the White
Mountains, in caves of the cliff dwellers on the Rio Grande, in tents on
the Saskatchewan; and I never locked a door, because there wasn't any
lock; and I never attempted to bar the door, because there wasn't any
need. Can you say as much of New York, or Chicago, or Washington? The
question may be asked--Will this kind of a holiday not be hot in summer?
You remember, perhaps, crossing the backbone of the Rockies some
mid-summer, when nearly everything inside the pullman car melted into a
jelly. Yes, it will be hot if you follow the beaten trail; for a
railroad naturally follows the lowest grade. But if you go back to the
ranch houses of the Upper Mesas and of foothills and canyons, you will be
from 7,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level, and will need winter wraps
each night, and may have to break the ice for your washing water in the
morning--I did.

Another reason why so many Americans do not see their own country is
that while one species of fool has scared away holiday seekers by tales
of extortionate cost, another sort of fool wisely promulgates the lie--a
lie worn shiny from repetition--that "game is scarce in the West." "No
more big game"--and your romancer leans back with wise-acre air to let
that lie sink in, while he clears his throat to utter another--"trout
streams all fished out." In the days when we had to swallow logic
undigested in college, we had it impressed upon us that one single
specific fact was sufficient to refute the broadest generality that was
ever put in the form of a syllogism. Well, then,--for a few facts as to
that "no-game" lie!

In one hour you can catch in the streams of the Pecos, or the Jemez, or
the White Mountains, or the Upper Sierras of Cali